Wednesday, July 12, 2017

Affective Needs--Chapter Twenty Three

**New chapters posted here on Wednesdays**

“Ruth?”

Someone
brushed my hair from my forehead.

“Ruuuth
. . . wake up,” my mother said.

“I
fell asleep?”

I
felt her hand on my face. “Yes.”

I
dragged my eyes open and was surprised by the amount of light in my room. I
bolted upright. “What time is it?” I looked for my clock, but the numbers were
blurry. I blinked once, twice, and tried to make them focus faster.

“Seven,”
my mother said, and got up off my bed. “I have to go. I’m already late, but I
didn’t want to leave before I checked on you.”

I
stared at her, completely showered and dressed for work, and tried to grasp at
the memory of what happened last night.

“You
were asleep when I got in,” she explained. “I didn’t want to wake you; it was
pretty late.”

I
pulled back the blankets—I was still wearing my clothes from yesterday. “What
happened?” I asked. “Are they okay?”

Her
lips twisted to the side of her mouth and she gave her one shouldered shrug as
she shook her head. “As okay as they can be? Really, I’m not sure anyone would
be okay in their circumstances. They are safe.”

“Safe?”

She
nodded.

I
swung my legs over the side of my bed and walked to my dresser. “Will Porter be
at school today?” I asked as I pulled open the bottom drawer and grabbed a pair
of jeans.

“No
. . . and neither will you, Ruth.”

This
stopped my hands. Confused, I stood up and faced her. “What?”

She
stared back with raised eyebrows, waiting for me to catch on.

Suspended.

“Oh,”
I dropped the jeans back into the drawer. “I forgot.” Three-day suspensions for
both me and Porter.

She
nodded, took a step toward me, and kissed my cheek. “I have to go, but maybe we
can talk about everything when I get home this afternoon?”

I
nodded.

I
listened to her shoes on the stairs, the sound of her picking up her keys off
the table by the door, the close of the door and then the deadbolt sliding into
place. When she was gone, I lay back down on my bed and stared at the ceiling.
I felt confused and unsure of what to do with myself. After last night, I had
an ocean’s worth of emotion churning below my surface, without the predictable
regularity of school to keep me distracted, I worried that a tidal wave of
feelings was quickly moving in to drown me. My bed was a rickety raft lost in
the middle of the Atlantic.

I
got up and went downstairs to make myself a cup of coffee. There was no way I
would be able to just sit here all day and stare at the ceiling.

In the small parking lot outside
Harmony House, I sat in the front seat of Vader and stared at the house with
peeling white paint. I didn’t have an appointment this time, but I had hoped
that Samantha would let me see Karen anyway. After everything that had happened
last night, I didn’t really feel like working on my honors thesis, but I needed
a purpose and a long drive.

Even
if sitting and watching Karen watch TV wasn’t much of a purpose.

I
grabbed my backpack and got out of my car. The air was crisp and the sun was
out. The sky a bright blue that reminded you that spring would soon turn all
the brown back to green. Near the house, a collection of stiff green leaves was
already pushing out of the dead-looking earth. I wasn’t a flower expert, but
they looked like the tulips that had started to sprout in our backyard.

Every
time I had come to Harmony House, there had never been many cars. At most six
or seven occupying the fifteen spaces available. Today, in the middle of the
day in the middle of the week, there were half that many, and I imagined they
all belonged to the people who worked here.

Except
for the shiny, low slung Mercedes with New York plates. It looked like an
expensive silver bullet, and completely out of place on the cracked and weedy
asphalt of this facility that survived on state funds and donations.

I
wondered if there was some higher-up here to meet with Samantha.

When
I walked in the door, there was an older woman I had never met sitting behind
the counter. She looked up and greeted me with a warm, pink-lipsticked smile. A
mop of loose gray curls framed her face. “Hello. Can I help you?”

I
forced myself to smile back even though the heaviness that had settled in my
chest made it almost impossible. “Hi. Is Samantha here?”

She
shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. She’s out today—sick son.”

“Oh.”
My arrangement to observe and write about Karen was sort of an under-the-table
deal between my mother and Samantha—as long as I let Samantha review what I
wrote before I turned it in, I could keep seeing Karen. I had no idea if this
woman would let me in. I brightened my smile and shrugged my shoulders like
Samantha being here, or not, was no big deal. “I drove up from Trenton to visit
Karen.” Maybe if she was thinking about not letting me in, knowing that I had
driven a whole hour to get here would sway her.

But
I didn’t need to go to the trouble of trying to create a guilt trip for the
lady—she waved me right on over.

“She’s
a popular lady today.” She smiled and gestured to the clipboard on the desk in
front of her. “Just sign in first.”

I
walked forward and picked up the pen. There was only one other name on the
sheet in the space above where I put my name, date, and reason for visit. The
signature was elegant with a practiced precision: Abigail Atwater.

The
Mercedes absolutely had to be hers.

I
noticed her reason for visit was blank.

“Karen’s
in the common room, and she already has one other visitor, so you ladies will
have to share her.” She smiled at her folksy joke and sat back down. “Do you
know the way back?”

“Yes.”
I smiled. “Thank you,” I started walking past the desk and toward the hall that
led to the common room. “The other lady.” I stopped and turned. “She won’t mind
if I’m there?”

The
woman flattened her mouth and swished her hand. “Naw. It’s only some attorney
from New York. Probably just making sure we don’t keep anybody chained up in
closets or something. You go on ahead. Besides, it’ll look good . . . Karen
having a real visitor.”

The
attorney. Now I remembered Samantha telling me about the woman from
New York who came to check up on Karen. I nodded and smiled and chose to not
saying anything else that might reveal that I was, in fact, not a real
visitor and I didn’t wait around for her to ask how Karen and I were related.
“Okay then.” I waved stupidly and hustled around the corner.

Halfway
down the hall I stopped. The double doors to the common room were open ahead of
me and I could see several of the other residents sitting at folding tables
with cards and games, or lounging in the worn mismatched sofas and armchairs
that were grouped around the room. From where I was standing, I couldn’t see
Karen or Abigail.

But
when I took a few steps closer to the doors and expanded my view into the
room—I saw them.

What
had I expected? I wasn’t sure. Maybe she looked exactly like I had imagined.
Her brown hair was cropped clean and close to her head, and revealed her sharp
chin and elegant neck. The expensive gray suit. The black high-heeled shoes
that walked that line between sexy and professional. The delicate teardrop silver
earrings hanging from each ear that added the dash of femininity to offset the
severity of her haircut—none of this was really surprising. Abigail Atwater
looked very much like a corporate attorney from New York who drove a very
expensive Mercedes.

It
was what she was doing in this common room that made me hold my breath. Abigail
Atwater belonged in a courtroom, a board room, the executive suite. There she
stood tall, commanded a room, made people listen.

But
here? At Harmony House, a run-down shoestring facility in middle-of-nowhere New
Jersey, Abigail Atwater was sitting at a small wooden table near the window, a
piece of paper towel spread over her lap, spoon-feeding Karen applesauce with
one hand, and trying to keep Karen’s stringy hair out of her face with the
other.

Abigail
said something I couldn’t hear to Karen, who, amazingly, nodded in response. I
had never seen Karen do anything other than stare at the TV on the other side
of the room. Abigail put the spoon down and grabbed her black, taut leather bag
from the back of her chair and placed it on her lap. A moment later, she pulled
a brush and hair tie out and moved her chair behind Karen’s. She brushed
Karen’s hair back and out of her face until she was able to secure it into a
low ponytail.

When
she leaned forward, her mouth close to Karen’s ear and whispered—I gasped.

My
God. I walked toward them.

Karen
nodded and smiled.

Abigail
pulled another hair tie from her bag and started to braid Karen’s ponytail.

Their
faces were in perfect profile to me. With Abigail’s short hair, and Karen’s
pulled back away from her face, I could see it. The same sharp chin, the same
elegant neck. As I approached, Abigail turned her head toward me, her soft
expression hardening as she scrutinized me and tried to assess what I might
want.

“You’re
her sister,” I blurted.

Not
a single muscle in Abigail’s face moved even a fraction of a centimeter. She
simply stared at me.

“You’re
her twin sister,” I elaborated.

“Who
are you?” she questioned me, her eyes narrowed.

For
a fraction of a second, I considered a lie. I’m Jenny, I work here.
Except something told me that Abigail Atwater was most likely a
bullshit-detection expert. You probably didn’t get to be a corporate attorney
in New York city driving a super-expensive car by letting eighteen-year-olds
get away with misdirection.

On
a hunch, I thrust my hand out to her. “Ruth Robinson. Pre-Princeton
neuroscience. I’ve been observing and comparing Karen to students with similar
cognitive functioning who have had the benefit of education.” I had a hope that
she would respect the truth more than be pissed about why I was here in the
first place.

Abigail
raised an eyebrow at me. “Pre-Princeton? Meaning you’re still in high
school?”

I
took a breath and nodded.

I
couldn’t be sure, but I thought she might have lowered her shoulders a fraction
of an inch. She returned her attention to the braid still in her hand and began
weaving the strands of hair. “You do know”—her tone was less threatening—“no
one is supposed to be studying her. There are protective orders.”

I
tried to keep a neutral expression and didn’t say a word.

Abigail
looked at me sideways. “That’s good. Never say anything to incriminate
yourself.” She took a deep breath and let it go. “High school,” she shook her
head. “Lucky for you I feel a deep fellowship with overreaching smart-asses
like you—it reminds me of myself. I’ve been coming here for almost a year and
no one else has ever noticed. How could you tell?”

“When
you pulled her hair back, your face was right next to hers in profile. If you
ignore everything else, it’s obvious.”

“Observant.”

I
shrugged.

“Neuroscience?”

“Yes.”

Abigail
nodded as if something made perfect sense to her. She finished Karen’s braid,
tied off the end, and shifted her intense eyes onto mine. “You have questions
for me,” she said.

“How
could you tell?”

“It’s
written all over your face.” She pointed to the table next to theirs. “Pull up
a chair.”

I
couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t going to report me, or Samantha. She was going
to give me even more information. I grabbed the nearest chair and sat down
while she moved hers back to the other side of the table.

Sitting
there between them, I couldn’t help but look from one to the other. Abigail was
impressed that I had noticed, but honestly, if I hadn’t walked in the room at
the very moment that I did, I don’t think I would have ever seen the
resemblance either.

The
other differences, there were just too many.

Abigail
pulled out her phone, put it on the table between us, pulled up her clock, and
started scrolling through the timer. “I don’t get over here as often as I would
like. You have five minutes—my time here is for Karen.”

“Okay.”

She
pushed start and the digital numbers started counting down. She folded her
hands into a neat clasp on the table in front of us.

I
stared at her.

“The
clock is ticking,” she reminded me.

I
glanced at the speeding numbers: 4:47 left.

Where
to start?

“Can
I take notes?” I started to open my backpack.

“No
time.”

She
was right. “When did you first come here?”

“Last
June.”

“Did
you always know you had a twin?”

“No.”

“When
did you find out?”

“When
I was eighteen and I could investigate my adoption paperwork.”

“Your
adoptive parents never told you?”

“They
never knew.”

This
confused me. I wanted her to give me more than one sentence responses. I wanted
to hear her whole story. I glanced at the timer, 4:06 left. “Why didn’t they
know?”

Abigail
gave me a look like she was impressed. “Because Karen and I were separated long
before my parents adopted me.”

“Why
weren’t you kept together? Was it because Karen was born disabled?”

I
glanced at Karen. Was Abigail upset because I had used the word disabled
in front of her sister?

Abigail
reached over and stopped the timer on her phone.

I
had done something wrong.

“I’m
sorry,” I said, then held my breath and waited for her anger. Of all the
adjectives I could think of to describe Abigail Atwater, intimidating
was number one on the list.

Abigail
stared at her sister for a moment and then turned her attention back to me.
“Karen wasn’t born disabled.”

I
narrowed my eyes and tried to understand what Abigail was saying, but after several
seconds, I shook my head. “I’m sorry . . . what?”

“You
think Karen was born this way?” She gestured to Karen, who was staring out the
window with a blank expression on her face.

“Wasn’t
she?”

Abigail
ran her tongue over her teeth and sat up straight. I could tell she was
carefully considering what her next words to me would be. “This comparison
you’re conducting . . . who is the other subject?”

“A
girl at my high school.”

“Who
is mentally retarded?”

I
shrugged my shoulders. I knew from my mother that was no longer the preferred
term. “Cognitively disabled, yes.”

Abigail
closed her eyes. “Excuse me. This girl was born with a cognitive disability?”

Now
that Abigail was asking, I realized I didn’t actually know—I had assumed so.
“Yes,” I said anyway.

Abigail
nodded. “Well, now, there is the obvious flaw in your experimental design. My
sister was born just exactly the same as me. Sure, our fourteen-year-old
biological mother abandoned us in a dumpster outside a crappy Chinese
restaurant. But when we were brought to the hospital by the owner of that
restaurant a few hours later, we were two perfectly healthy, perfectly
developed, perfectly identical twin baby girls.”

My
skin had gone cold because of a sick chill of understanding that was washing
over me.“If
you want a true experimental comparison, forget your other girl.” Abigail
leaned back in her chair. The expression on her face was fierce with hatred for
the words falling out of her mouth. She raised her hands dramatically to frame
her face. “You are in the presence of Karen’s perfect genetic match.” Her
breath caught on the last words and came out as a sob. “Our singular
difference?” Her head tilted to the side as the tears ran down her face, leaving
dark black tracks across her perfect makeup. “I ended up living with parents.”
She pointed to Karen, who seemed utterly oblivious to all of this. “She ended
up being kept by monsters.”